Let's write about newspaper thiefs! (Looking for someone who is stealing newspapers!) You cannot make this stuff up.

Stop! Newspaper Thief! On one Yorkville (Manhattan) block, print isn’t dying—it’s being stolen. 

Echo essay published in The New Yorker written by Naaman Zhou

Can a book conservator, a ninety-year-old fax enthusiast, and a vigilante nab a well-read bandit?

By Naaman Zhou, a journalist and editor. He is a copy editor at The New Yorker, and was previously a reporter for Guardian Australia.

There are a lot of valuable things out on the street these days. 

Porch pirates swipe packages. Lift a catalytic converter from a Prius—between the engine and the muffler—and you can flip it for a thousand dollars. But what if you’re looking for a more regular income stream? Some newspapers now go for four dollars an issue—six on the weekend. Could that be money for the taking?

On a tree-lined block of East Eighty-fifth Street, in Yorkville, not far from Gracie Mansion, Doris Straus, a retired book conservator (print subscriptions: Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times) noticed a disturbing trend: her periodicals kept going missing. One week—a particularly big one for news (headline: “SOME IN ROOM WITH BIDEN SAY LAPSES ARE INCREASING”)—her Times was gone almost every other day. “It was driving me crazy,” Straus said recently. “I can’t eat my breakfast without the newspaper. It’s not the same thing online.” Neighbors were being victimized, too. Straus ruled out spotty delivery. It had to be a thief—one with particular tastes. “They only take the Post and the Times,” Straus explained. She posted about the incidents on a local online forum. One person commented with relief, “I get Newsday so maybe I am safe.”

A printed-word vigilante found himself drawn to the case. A careful canvassing of the street showed it to be a mix of doorman buildings, walkups, and homes with fenced-off gardens, shady and quiet—perfect for reading. The inky-fingered residents were on edge. “The only issue we’ve had is, like, people parking in front of the pumps,” Bryant Lorenzo, a doorman, reported. “The stealing is really alarming.”

Defensive measures were implemented. Straus’s building has a pair of dark, stately columns that frame the entrance. A secure drop-off? The street’s regular deliverywoman, Rene, started stashing the Times behind them. But the bandit seemed one step ahead. Straus, wearing sunglasses and comfortable brogues, pointed out the compromised rendezvous point with frustration. “You really can’t see from the street,” she said. “You have to know it’s there.” An inside job?

Just when the trail had gone cold, a tipster stepped forward. Cathy De Vido, ninety years old, saw it all go down from the front of her historic wood-frame farmhouse. 

Over a coffee-table interrogation, with Straus sitting in, De Vido, who has light-brown hair and wears clear oval glasses, sang like a canary.

It was early dawn. Six-twenty. De Vido was in her home office, reading a lengthy fax from her son, when she heard something. “Our gate creaks,” she said. Someone was out there. De Vido crept to the front door and peered through a glass viewing slot. “I saw a baseball cap,” she said. The hat was attached to a woman. De Vido opened the door and moved toward the perp, but the mystery woman avoided apprehension: “She was very agile.” De Vido called out, “Hello!” The woman said, “Excuse me,” and scurried away. Only later did De Vido notice that her Times was missing.

The witness described the scofflaw: “Curly white hair, jaw-length. Wearing a jean jacket, the baseball cap, and chinos.” Age? “White-haired, but very spry,” De Vido said. “I would say she had to be in her late seventies or early eighties.” The advanced age didn’t fit the typical profile of a thief, but De Vido suspected ties to a larger enterprise. “I think she was selected for that reason,” she said. “You know, perhaps because she would be so unlikely to have any suspicion aroused.”

Straus said, “It’s a cabal!” (Someone who is involved in a secret plot!)

Enough speculation—this called for a stakeout. Straus suggested that a neighbor, Jim Hart, who gets the Post, could be good to keep watch. (“He’s ex-Wall Street, ex-military.”) But Hart wasn’t a morning person. (“I’m retired—no, thank you,” Hart said.) The vigilante had no choice but to go without backup. Straus and De Vido agreed to leave some papers (“WEAK JOBS DATA HELPS TO SPREAD GLOBAL SELL-OFF”) outside, as bait.

On a warm morning, the vigilante settled in. It was five-fifty-eight. Joggers jogged. Pigeons pecked at a few trash bags. Many dogs were walked. A white pickup was idling for a suspiciously long time. A getaway car? Further investigation revealed a plumber, smoking a cigar while waiting for a job. No dice.

The thief seemed scared off. Rene, the deliverywoman, appeared, wearing a white cap and carrying a ring of jangling keys. (She declined to provide a surname; she prefers delivering the papers to appearing in them.) She’d been up since 2:30 A.M. “I don’t do the job for money,” she said. “I do it because I like to walk.” She had a message for the thieves: “The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ That means even paper!”

She wandered over to De Vido’s house, and was greeted at the gate. De Vido repeated her description of the suspect.

“I think I’ve seen a woman like that, one time,” Rene said. “It rings a little bell.”

The sun was up—a bright, early-morning light—and Rene went off to finish her route. De Vido picked up her Times and carried it inside. The suspect remained at large. ♦

Published in the print edition of the August 26, 2024, issue, with the headline “The Paper Trail.”